82 TRAVELS IN AFRICA.

purchase of inebriating liquors. The dress of the latter also is neither so good nor so cleanly as that of the former, which is, almost invariably, white or blue. The Sonikeys are careless about their dress or persons, and what with smoking, drinking, and dirt, they are the most filthy set we ever saw.

We observed hanging on a stake, outside the walls of the town, a dress composed of the bark of a tree torn into small shreds, and formed so as to cover the whole body of the person wearing it, who is a sort of bugbear, called Mumbo Jumbo, that occasionally visits all the Mandingo towns, for the purpose of keeping the married women in order. I have been told that the husband who has occasion to find fault with one of his wives, for here every man has as many as his circumstances will admit, either puts on this dress himself, or gets one of his friends to do it, and having made known his intended visit to the town, by shrieking and howling in the woods near it, arrives after sunset at the assembly place, where all the inhabitants are obliged to meet him, with music, singing, and dancing, which continues for some hours, and terminates by his seizing the unfortunate woman, and flogging her most unmercifully in presence of the whole assembly, who only laugh at this horrid performance. We have never had